How to Address Workplace Stress and Stay in the Green Zone

Workplace stress is a real and potent danger, especially in the healthcare environment. Sustained stress in healthcare and hospital settings can result in employee distress, burnout, and other mental health challenges. It can also lead to decreased productivity, reduced vigilance and attention to detail on the job, as well as a higher level of employee turnover. The prolonged stress that healthcare workers experienced during the darkest days of the pandemic took a toll. One of our biggest takeaways from this time is that in order to remain healthy and high functioning in the workplace and be at the top of our game for ourselves, our colleagues, and our patients, we in the healthcare field all need the time and space to decompress.

Deciding what type of self-care works best to decompress is a very individual endeavor. For some, transitioning from clinical duty to work on other projects for a time or staying home to decompress worked well. For others, figuring out what enables them to reset after such a prolonged stressful period was not as clear. Encouraging more social time, more quiet time, more sleep, a better exercise routine, therapy or a changed schedule were some of the options offered, but we quickly learned that no one size fit all. We decided to do research to better understand the best way to break the pattern of stress and burnout, so that we could help our healthcare workers show up for themselves and their patients in a much healthier state of mind.?

One thing we discovered on this journey is that prevention is the key to avoiding mental health burnout in the first place. To that end, we developed an in-depth program called Wisdom and Wellbeing to train our workforce and the next generation of healthcare workers to recognize the early signs of stress, and to take the necessary steps to prevent it. The program creates a supportive environment for growth, and includes three core concepts: Enhancing individual resilience, identifying and reducing unnecessary stressors, and recognizing peer stress and knowing how to respond.

We used the Stress Continuum Model created by the military and versioned for the healthcare industry to promote psychological health. We identified four key levels of stress on healthcare workers: Ready, Reacting, Injured, and Ill. The objective of the model is to teach people how to monitor and be aware of their stress levels, and to understand how stress affects their mindset and job performance. You can see by the model below how an individual can transition from a healthy mindset (green zone) to mildly stressed (yellow zone) or severely stressed (orange zone) and how this can ultimately lead to very unhealthy outcomes including anxiety, depression and severe impairment (red zone).?

Our Wisdom and Wellbeing program helps workers to create their own toolbox to address issues causing burnout, and the peer-to-peer support is achieving strong, positive outcomes. Employees are recognizing the signs of distress in their co-workers. When a colleague is having a bad day, they know to ask, “Is everything ok?” and at that point, the issue can be addressed quickly. The toolbox provides a support system that includes friends, family, colleagues, and professional therapists that can be called upon when needed most. Having a planned response is a prevention strategy that allows issues to be caught early -?and addressed immediately.?

For leaders, recognizing stress in your own work life and taking prompt action to address it is key to maintaining successful leadership. Leaders set the tone for the organization, so a leader is in the red zone, their teams are going to struggle. For me, the most important safeguard against stress is to be well-rested. When I feel myself slipping into the red zone, it is usually because I’ve become sleep deprived, and this affects every corner of my life. I simply cannot function as well cognitively without proper rest. Modeling is also an important component of leadership in stressful environments, as leaders must demonstrate behaviors that help to de-stress employees. If you are sending late night emails, your teams will feel obligated to respond. If you model behavior that respects work/life balance, such as not answering emails while on vacation, this will free your teams to do the same. It is crucial to give people permission to have a life outside of work.?

It is the nature of the healthcare profession to be stressful at times. There are necessary stressors inherent in the work we do – like high acuity patients, grief and loss, and a high-risk work environment. However, we can address these challenges with the right set of tools and support systems in place. It is not unusual for people in high-stress jobs to move into the yellow zone for a short period for example, but if healthcare professionals slip into the red zone, long-term occupational impairment can occur. I am thrilled to see how this Wisdom and Wellbeing program has been having a positive impact on the team here at UVA Health, enabling us all to recognize the signs of burnout, and have the tools to recharge and reset for a healthier state of mind.?